Student Startup Camp breathed life into twelve business ideas!
Together with University of Tartu and Garage48 IdeaLab brought together Student Startup Camp - a crash course to startup life. About one hundred students from Estonia and beyond worked together in teams for six days to build their ideas into working prototypes.
Camp got it’s kick-off on Monday, 30th of Janunary at business and community center Spark. During the day the first ideas were pitched, the most promising ones of picked out and teams were formed. The night ended at a cultural club Naiiv where teams started their first task called „Business idea on a beer coaster“.
During the next four days participants learned the basics of launching a tuch startup, worked long hours in teams and got intensive mentoring and inspirational talk by the #EstonianMafia founders, including people behind Garage48, Weekdone, Mooncascade and many more.
From 28 ideas pitched on Monday, twelve were picked to develop during the camp and made it to the final presentation in front of the jury, where each team had three minutes to pitch their idea and introduce their prototypes. Jury members were Marlon Dumas from UT Institute of Computer Science, sTARTUp Hub manager Karin Sepp, leader of UT IdeaLab Maret Ahonen, founder os Speak Languages Chris Thompson and Krists Avots from Garage48.
Three special prizes were given:
- Best prototype – Recycle Solutions
- Eco-heros aka Most environmental friendly – Root ForEST
- Best design – Korter
The eco-heroes of the week - Root ForEST
The best design award was given to Korter
The main prize was given to Fractory - one stop manufacturing marketplace for businesses and hobbysts! The winning team got tickets to Latitude59 – a tech and startup conference happening in Tallinn in May. The lead of Fractory, Martin Vares was very satisfied with his team’s workprocess and the outcome. „The coolest thing about this week was the dedication of teammembers – idea development was far more important than sleeping and resting!“ he said. He also promised that Fractory will for sure become an actually functioning platform because the need for such facility is whopping.
Team Fractory was surely happy for the results!
Student Startup Camp was funded by IT Academy.
